Officers
by SamRosinenbomber
Summary: Who needs them, really? Written for the 2014 Short Story Speedwriting Challenge.


There were quite a few things in life that he knew not to do.

Don't question the officers.

Don't get in the way of the officers.

Don't try to tell the officers what to do.

Don't try to bum a smoke off of one of the officers.

Officers. Corporal DeGelleke could really do without those guys. They always acted like they were better than everyone else, just because they had some bars on their shoulders and he didn't. What did they even do to get them, anyway? And what did they do after they got them?

Nothing, that's what. Nothing but boss everyone else around. DeGelleke knew that he wasn't the only one who felt this way; he knew his fellow waist gunner, Corporal Gaffney, shared his sentiments down to the letter. The two had become friends on KP duty a while back, when the old commanding officer, Captain Sherwood, had assigned the two of them to the job for some imagined infraction. To this day, the two of them still couldn't recall what they had done to deserve being put on KP. It was just another officer throwing his weight around.

DeGelleke hadn't signed up for the United States Air Corps to be a waist gunner. No, he'd wanted to be a pilot, maybe even a fighter pilot with his very own plane, just like Clark Gable in the pictures, but, no, that spot went to an _officer._

Of course. By now, he didn't expect anything different.

There were other things DeGelleke would have liked as well, such as to not be in the Tail End Charlie position for at least one mission. For some reason, the _officers _in charge always liked to put his crew in the most vulnerable spot in the whole formation. They loved to do that; make the enlisted men take the brunt of the fighter attacks, perfectly willing to put their backsides in harm's way just to keep their own out of it.

His ma had been so proud when she'd heard that he'd been promoted to Corporal, but that got her thinking that any day now they'd make him General. Would he feel different about officers if he was one? It seemed highly unlikely that something like that would ever happen, but if it did, he knew he would try to be fair, try to be understanding and supportive, unlike the officers he'd known here.

Speaking of officers, strolling up for the 6 AM muster inspection was their new pilot, a guy he remembered being told was a Second Lieutenant, a fellow named Robert Hogan. He looked like an alright kinda guy, but he was still an officer, so DeGelleke didn't have high hopes for this Hogan character. This was his first meeting with his new crew, so he would probably do what all the other officers did; something to prove to the enlisted men that they were the one in charge, and nothing these peon enlisted men could do to change that.

DeGelleke, Gaffney, and the rest of the crew of the Flying Fortress _Dinah Might _gave the officer a crisp salute, which was followed by a gentle, "at ease, men," an order which was promptly obeyed.

DeGelleke usually ignored the blathering officers did during inspections, but Robert Hogan was quiet. He looked over the crew with a neutral expression, never once pointing out a flaw on one of the men, even if there was one to be seen. He'd seen some officers make a bug fuss about the littlest details, something being a millimeter off or something like that. And he was pretty sure that if you measured some the insignia on some of the officers, you'd find some things _way_ more than just a millimeter off.

DeGelleke was just starting to think that maybe this inspection would go alright and be over soon, until he suddenly felt something brushing across his leg. He glanced down, only to have his worst fears confirmed.

Oh boy. It was Kilroy.

Kilroy, called such because, well, because you could always tell where he'd been, thanks to the alarming about of physical evidence he could leave behind, was a tiny bulldog puppy. He'd wandered onto base a few weeks ago, and stuck around because the _Dinah Might _crew kept feeding him. Alright, it had been DeGelleke who had started it, and it would probably be DeGelleke on KP until the war ended and probably even some time after that when Second Lieutenant Hogan saw Kilroy, but what kind of dog kept coming back for powdered eggs, anyway?

Hogan turned to address the crew when he suddenly spotted the tiny dog, plopped on the ground next to DeGelleke's foot, drooling away.

"Is that your dog, Corporal?" Hogan asked.

"Yes, sir," answered DeGelleke, already feeling his collar becoming damp with sweat.

"You, ah, do know that having a dog here is against this company's regulations, don't you Corporal?"

"Yes, sir," he gulped.

Hogan looked as though he was thinking about something. _Probably cooking up some long-winded tirade. Officers love embarrassing men in front of the rest of their crew. _

"Corporal," Hogan asked after a moment.

DeGelleke hesitated, but finally managed to spit out a, "Yes, sir?"

"Are any kind of pets allowed here on base?"

It was Corporal Gaffney who decided to pipe up to answer this question. "Sir, Captain Sherwood keeps one of them aquariums fulla fish here, sir."

"Well, in that case…"

DeGelleke could feel himself cringing; he wished that the ground underneath him would swallow him up right now, or maybe the whole country would get hit by an asteroid, anything to escape the embarrassing chewing-out he could feel coming.

"...that's a very nice looking goldfish you've got there, Corporal. Dismissed."

And with an impish smile and another crisp salute, Robert Hogan was off.

Huh.

_Maybe officers aren't so bad after all._


End file.
